I agree in being optimistic that ETIAS won't reciprocate the stronger UK questions, because it would have to do that for all nationalities (unless it made some special derogation allowing them to ask extra questions solely to UK citizens, which would be very petty).

You'd think the UK would change in line with the ETIAS question, but no government would want certain newspapers accusing them of being soft on crime or (even worse) soft on foreign criminals.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

There was an outcry a couple of years ago when an Eastern European (Lithuanian I seem to recall) was convicted of murdering and sexually assaulting a young girl and it turned out he had a previous murder conviction in his home country.  Lots of hard questions asked about how he was allowed into the country etc. Unfortunately, these incidents do tend to colour public opinion (even without the Daily Mail) - better to stop one situation like this than inconvenience hundreds or thousands of others who have rehabilitated and are simply getting on with their lives..

Exactly, but striking that balance is the tricky part. The only way to be sure is to ask for a police certificate. Given that some EU countries don't record all convictions, and then routinely delete some of those they do record, it does put UK nationals at a disadvantage. Obviously, the more serious crimes wouldn't be deleted, but I suspect that many are deleted that the UK would want to know about.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

Even if the UK implement a pre-authorisation travel system, there will still be an easy way for an EU citizen to bypass if they want to.

They will have the right to travel to Ireland. They can then simply travel from Dublin to any UK port, or go via Belfast - with the Common Travel Area there are no border checks between Ireland and the UK.

The Republic of Ireland isn't in the Schengen Zone, so any checks would be done on leaving the Schengen country. Of course, going in the opposite direction, you could travel from Northern Ireland to the Republic, but not from there to a Schengen country.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

My point didn't relate to Schengen.  As Ireland is in the EU, a citizen from another country is free to travel there regardless of border checks. Once in Ireland, the CTA would allow easy entry into the UK...

In terms of the law, it is all political will. In terms of how politics effects the law - you just need to look at the US. If a politician stood for election here promising that every sexual offender must place an orange sign in their garden notifying the public of their 'danger' and map the location of every offender online the public would vote for it - the fact it actually increases the likelihood of reoffending is material. One of the very reasons we are leaving the EU is because they are not as strict on crime/ punishment as us. So, we are never going to align with the EU requirements - we will always just get stricter and stricter.

Just look at Sex Stories in newspapers - people love to get angry about them. It sells newspapers.

My point was that it wouldn't work travelling in the opposite direction. It still undermines the government's supposed determination to keep foreign criminals out, and probably explains why they aren't being very strict. It's almost like an honesty box.

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If you are to punish a man retributively you must injure him. If you are to reform him you must improve him. And men are not improved by injuries. (George Bernard Shaw)

I read today that the French are planning to impose a visa requirement for UK travellers to France in the event of a no-deal.
This seems strange and potentially worrying that individual countries are planning to impose travel restrictions, rather than relying on an EU wide system that doesn’t currently ask for criminal history for visa applications, and is also only planning to ask restricted questions relating to criminal history on the planned ETIAS system.